IIT-Madras develops high performance magnesium alloy for auto, aerospace industry

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) researchers in association with the University of North Texas and US Army Research Laboratory have developed an engineered magnesium alloy with significantly improved properties, which could replace steel and aluminium alloys in automotive and aerospace components.

The current industrial application of wrought magnesium alloys in structural components was very limited due to their poor moderate, low strength, poor ductility, yield strength asymmetry and lack of high strain rate super plasticity, despite their density being two-third of aluminium and one-quarter of steel, a release from IIT-M said today.

With vehicular emissions alone contributing 27 per cent of total CO2 emissions, countries around the world were focusing on reducing them. It said a major focus has been lowering the carbon footprint of vehicles by using light-weight material in their body. Light weight vehicles take less energy (i.e. fuel) to run and were therefore one of the strategies to increase vehicle’s energy-efficiency.